Turning Relationship Ghosts Into Ancestors’
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‘Turning Relationship Ghosts into Ancestors’ The use of intersubjective systems theory in navigating relational trauma states in couples therapy DAVID SLATTERY Dip. H.I.P. M.A. Post-Qualifying MA in Humanistic and Integrative Psychotherapy Validated by Middlesex University 2006. Contents. Introduction (p5-10). Chapter One: ‘Literature Review’ (p11-21). Chapter Two: ‘Research Methodology’ (p22-27). Chapter Three: ‘Turning Relationship Ghosts into Ancestors’ (p28-35). Chapter Four: ‘Relational Trauma States and how to Survive Them!’ ( P36-44). Conclusion (p45-47). Appendix (p48-49). Bibliography (p50-61). 2 ‘Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them.’ Harper Lee ‘Experience is for me the highest authority. The touchstone of validity is my own experience.’ Carl Rogers ‘A defining feature of our thinking lies in our not assigning any greater intrinsic validity to the analyst’s world of reality than to the patient’s.’ Robert Stolorow and George Atwood 3 Acknowledgements. I have had a growing interest in the ‘bits around the edge’ of therapy, the quick exchange on the stairs, the subtle look that changes as clients comes in the door and the general ‘parapraxes’ (Freud ’01) and nuances of our exchanges. In parallel I have had a similar growing interest in the bits around the edges of books: the preface, the after word and, that give-away of the emotional journey of the author, the acknowledgements. When a writer speaks about how much colleagues or family or friends have meant to them in their work it now has more of an emotional resonance for me, having been on my own journey. In terms of the process of writing I have felt very supported by the PQMA group: Tricia Scott (as tutor), and Jane Purkiss, Tree Staunton and Ailin Kelleher (fellow writers). As teaching colleagues at the Bath Centre for Psychotherapy and Counselling, Bath, UK: Jane, Tree, Tricia and Judy Ryde have also been part of my development as a tutor, of which helping students with research and writing is a significant part. An ongoing e-mail dialogue has expanded my thinking about theory during this time in particular with John Kirti Wheway, my friend and colleague, who has supported my efforts to become more familiar with intersubjective systems theory, and with whom I’ve had some hilarious exchanges that have kept my spirits up. During the writing of this MA I have, along with Jill Gabriel, founded the Centre for Relational Couples Therapy in Bath, UK. Although Jill has not been involved directly with this writing my work with her has influenced my thinking about couples enormously. Finally my thanks go to Holly, my wife, who has supported this writing from the beginning with her generous interest, and help in creating space in which I could write. Also to my children Sophie, Lizzie and Harry whose innocent interest in ‘Dad’s writing thing’ (which refreshingly never lasted more than a minute!) has kept me grounded. This writing has helped give birth to a new identity, that of a fledgling writer, researcher and academic for which I am immensely grateful. 4 Introduction. The Struggle. ‘There’s a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don’t, and the secret is this: It’s not the writing part that’s hard. What’s hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance.’ (Pressfield 2002: introduction). ‘Sitting down to write’ has been a huge struggle and a powerful reflection of the process of being with ‘relational trauma states’. I have spent days and days in a ‘resistant’ state, sitting at my computer checking out how David Beckham’s cruciate ligament problem is coming along, or how some obscure University cricket team are doing. Hours and hours pushing papers around, adding another book to my potential bibliography (size matters when you are anxious!). One time Holly, my wife, came back, after taking the kids out to give me some space to write, and sniffed the air, ‘Do I smell procrastination?’ , it was furniture polish, I had (for the first time in living memory) been polishing my desk! Some of this difficulty can be traced way back to my early experiences of reading and writing. As long as I can remember I have had a conviction that I am not really creative: I can’t read, I can’t write and I can’t draw. Also as long as I can remember I have been known to be a good participant in class, but not good at homework, essays and exams. In short I am a practical, participatory kind of person, not an academic. This identity followed me into psychotherapy where I was a very confident starter and soon had a pretty full practice. I considered myself good at the job, but lousy at theory. Faced with producing a dissertation and case study in order to qualify I finally, in my early 30’s, had engineered for myself a clash between my ancient introjected (1) (Perls 1947) sense of self that told me I was not able to be creative academically and a newer sense of self that was finding pleasure, excitement and a sense of authority through exploring my self through the medium of academic study. This ‘success’ was followed by a growing reputation as an examiner of counselling and psychotherapy papers and gradually becoming more senior as a tutor at the Bath Centre for Psychotherapy and Counselling where I came 5 to a developing integration of theory through the experience of teaching it to others. So my idea of myself has been gradually changing through having different experiences in the present. This is an important idea in therapy whether you are having a different experience in the present with the therapist: a ‘reparative’ experience, or are re-experiencing something differently through an unresolved state being evoked . In couples therapy there is a way in which this is particularly important between the couple (and less important between the therapist and the couple), as there are often many opportunities each day for the couple to have experiences that are creative or destructive for their relationship. With the therapist the contact is often only weekly. Relational Couples Therapy. This describes a way of working with couples that draws on relational theory: contemporary psychoanalysis, dialogical gestalt, (and in my case a mytho-poetic narrative). It describes my theoretical stance and the main therapeutic milieu, the relationship between the couple and myself. ‘…if one of the two commits adultery, the person who is most hurt, who receives the deepest cut, however incredible it may seem, is not the other person, but that other ‘other’ which is the couple….’ (Jose Saramago 1999:50) This extraordinary statement from Saramago’s novel ‘All The Names.’ eloquently describes something we are not used to conceptualising and making part of our everyday awareness, but have experience of all the time. We often have a clear sense of what couples are like, how they operate and how we feel when we have been in contact with them. He is not talking about one person, or the other. He is not even talking about the sum of two personalities, two personalities reacting to each other. He speaks of ‘the other ‘other’’. Of a wound happening to a relationship. ‘A couple relationship is a systemic relational phenomenon; it is co-created by the couple out of their previous experience and current expectations and assumptions. It is unique... Two people, each with their own shape, come together to form a third shape, their ‘relationshape’. This shape holds the potential for individual growth, intimacy, connection and transformation. However, when couples come to therapy they 6 are often struggling with deep disappointment. They may have feelings that they do not understand and they may not know that difference often needs to be defined by conflict.’ (Slattery and Gabriel 2006). ‘Conflict’ here means a conscious expression of difference, an experience that can be mutually strengthening if the aim is to communicate rather than attack or destroy. For people who have problems with difference, and given the amount of war and strife and ‘hate crime’ that exists in the world it would suggest that that is the majority of us, a straightforward expression of difference has not been possible and so some other way of being has been developed. An existence that is not ‘simple’ but rather ‘perverse’. An accumulation of such experience in an individual will lead to a persistent state of trauma. When this occurs in a couple I have come to know it as a ‘relational trauma state’. Often couples arrive in therapy in a last ditch attempt to save their relationships having endured years of frustration, dissatisfaction and loneliness. For the couple the situation they are in often feels hopeless and deeply entrenched and the behaviour of the other deeply offensive and ‘wrong’ (in a reified sense). This relational trauma state can put enormous pressure on the therapist to find ‘the answer’; to provide some ‘hope’ where none seems to exist, except perhaps unconsciously (Casement 1985/1990). In researching for his book ‘The Family Crucible’ Augustus Napier describes this process, ‘Digging into these interviews was fascinating, but it was also frustrating. I quickly became enmeshed in a nightmare of complexity as I tried to describe the nuances of voice, the peculiarities of phrasing, the intricate sequence of events in the interviews. I wrote fifty pages about a single hour of therapy and felt that I had treated the material superficially. (Napier and Whitaker 1978 p. xii).